Suttree (54 page)

I'm all right.

You want a sip of this cold lemonade fore I go?

An eye opened. The musty gutted hulk of the car stank of mold and sweat and cheap whiskey. Wasps kept coming in the naked rear window and vanishing through a crack in the domelight overhead.

What? said Reese.

I said would you like a sip of this cold lemonade?

The old man tried to see without moving his head but he gave it up. Shit, he said. You aint got no lemonade.

Suttree pulled him around by one arm. Come on, he said. Get your ass up from there and let's go.

A bloated face turned up. Ah God. Just leave me here to die.

Let's go, Reese.

Where are we at?

Let's go.

He struggled up, looking around.

How you feeling, old partner? said Suttree.

Reese looked up into Suttree's grinning face. He put his hands over his eyes. Where you been? he said.

Come on.

Reese shook his head. Boy, we a couple of good'ns aint we?

You dont have a little drink hid away do you?

Shit.

Here.

He lowered his hands. Suttree was holding the almost empty bottle at him. Why goddamn, Sut, he said. He reached for the bottle with both hands and twisted off the cap and drank.

Leave me corners, said Suttree.

Reese closed his eyes, screwed up his face and shivered and swallowed. He blew and held the bottle up. Goddamn, he said. I dont remember it bein that bad last night.

Suttree took the bottle from him and let the little it held fill up one corner and then he tilted it and drank and pitched the empty bottle out through the open window into the weeds. Well, he said. Think you can make it now?

We'll give it a try.

He pulled himself painfully from the doorless car and stood squinting in the heat little pleased with what he saw. Where do you reckon they sell beer on Sunday up here?

Right here probably, Suttree said, nodding toward the roadhouse.

They passed among the cabins and staggered across the dusty waste of gravel and trash with their tongues out like dogs. Suttree tapped at a door at the rear of the premises. They waited.

Knock again, Sut.

He did.

A slide shot back in the side of the building and a man peered out. What'll you have, boys? he said.

You got any cold beer?

It's all cold. What kind?

What kind? said Suttree.

Any goddamned kind, said Reese.

You got Miller's?

What you want, a sixpack?

Suttree looked at Reese. Reese was looking at him blandly. Suttree said: Have you got any money?

No. Aint you?

He felt himself all over. Not a fucking dime, he said.

The bootlegger looked from one to the other of them.

Where's that pearl? said Suttree.

The old man raised his foot and put it down again. He leaned against the side of the building and raised his foot and reached down in his sock. He held up his purse.

How come you to still have that, said Suttree. Did you not get any poontang last night?

You daggone right I got me some. But I never took off my shoes. He undid the mouth of the thing and rolled out the pearl and held it up. Looky here, he said.

What's that supposed to be? said the bootlegger.

A pearl. Go on. Take a look at it.

You sons of bitches get on away from here, said the bootlegger, and slammed the little window shut.

They looked at each other for a minute and then Suttree squatted in the dust among the flattened cans.

Shit, said Reese.

Suttree palmed his knees and shook his head. We're hellatious traders, he said.

Boy I hate a dumb son of a bitch like that that dont know the value of nothin.

Let's get the hell out of here. It's a long way home.

Coming over the Pigeon River Bridge into Newport a county police cruiser passed them. The old man saw them coming. Wave like they know ye, he said.

Fuck that, said Suttree.

The cruiser went by and Reese waved real big. The cruiser turned at the edge of the bridge and came back and pulled up alongside. A fat deputy looked them over. Who you think you wavin at buddy?

Suttree groaned.

Reese smiled. I thought you was somebody I knowed, he said.

Is that right? Maybe you'd like to come uptown and get a little better aquainted.

He didnt mean anything by it, officer.

The deputy eyed Suttree up and down, little joy in the beholding. I'll be the judge of that, he said. Where you two goin?

Both reckoned one more wrong answer would be all that the law allowed. They looked at each other. Suttree could hear the river beneath them. He saw himself in a swandive, heedless, lost. Under gray swirling waters. He could hear the cruiser's motor idling roughly with its high camshaft. Home, he said.

The driver had said something to the deputy. The deputy looked them over again. Well, he said, you'd better be gettin on there.

Yessir, Suttree said.

Much obliged, your officer, said the old man.

They pulled away and turned at the end of the bridge and came back. The driver glanced at them in passing but they were both looking at the ground.

Bastards, Suttree said. I thought for a minute there we were gone.

I knowed how to handle it, Reese said.

I told you not to wave, goddamnit. And what the hell is your officer supposed to mean?

I dont know. Shit, my head hurts.

He was stumbling along holding the top of his head with both hands. Suttree looked at him in disgust. We'd better get the hell out of here, he said.

We better not go through town.

Dont worry, said Suttree. We're not.

They turned down along the river and Suttree took bearings by the sun and plotted a course crosscountry that should bring them out on the highway on the other side of town. They went wandering mournfully down little dirt tracks and across fields. They went through a shantytown strung out along the edge of a branch, all grass and growing things about the creek and the encampment gone, a land of raw clay strewn with trash, with chickens and scabrous dogs. A cadaverous and darkeyed people watched mutely, furtive and dimly defined in their doorways. Such squalid folk as not even a weed grew among. Reese nodded and howdied to them but they just stared.

They crossed a pasture where grackles blue and metallic in the sun were turning up dried cowpats for the worms beneath and they went on past the back side of a junklot with the sun wearing hard upon them and upon the tarpaper roof of the parts shack and upon the endless fenders and lids of wrecked cars that lay curing paintlorn in the hot and weedy reeks.

They ended up lost in a big alfalfa field. On three sides were woods and on the fourth was where they'd come from.

Which way? Reese said.

Suttree squatted and held his head. Will some son of a bitch please tell me what I'm doing here?

I got to get out of this sun fore my old head pops, said Reese. He looked down. Suttree had tilted forward onto his knees. They looked like castaways. Dont lay down, said Reese, or ye never will get up.

Suttree looked up at him. You would absolutely pull the pope under, he said.

He probably dont even drink. Which way, do ye reckon?

Suttree struggled up and looked around and struck out again.

They crossed into heavy woods and began to climb. The ground was covered with random limestone and there were sinkholes to be fallen into.

You take poison ivy, Sut?

No. Do you?

No. Thank the Lord. I believe this here must be under cultivation.

They went on. They rested more and more going up the ridge. Just sitting in the undergrowth like apes eyeing one another with little expectation of anything and breathing hard. When they got to the top they looked out and they could see below them through the trees a piece of black highway about two miles away.

I dont think I can make it without a drink of water, Suttree said.

Dont drink no water, Sut. It'll make ye drunk all over again.

Suttree glared at him.

When they reached the highway they were staggerfooted and crazylooking. As far as you could see in either direction there was not so much as a billboard. Suttree sat down by the edge of the road with his feet spread and began to pick at gravels and little straws and things.

Here comes a car, Sut.

Thumb it.

Well get up. He wont stop with somebody setting down.

They watched the driver's eyes. He looked like a skittish horse the way he rolled them and the car swerved out as if he'd keep from being leapt upon by these roadside predators who possibly fared on the flesh of motorists in lonely places.

An hour later they were still standing there. Three cars and one truck had passed. They looked at each other and at themselves. The old man fell to combing his hair with his hands.

We better start walking, Suttree said.

How far from home you reckon we are?

I dont know. Twenty miles. Thirty maybe. Suttree's eyes looked burnt and a crusty paste had formed over his lips.

What time do you reckon it is?

Suttree looked at the sky. Gently quaking like a vat of molten cobalt. Past noon. Maybe two oclock. Let's walk on down around this next curve. Maybe there's a store or something.

The old man shaded his eyes and looked down the hot and smoking road to where it dissolved in a distant haze. The landscape subsequent seemed to shift and veer so that he batted his eyes and made little gestures with his hands as if to shape things right again. I reckon we can try for it, he said.

They set off, stumbling along the roadway with their eyes down. If you keep from looking up for a long time you can surprise yourself with how far you've come. Suttree fell to counting the bottlecaps in the dusty roadside gravel. Then he began to divide them into the rightside ups and the upside downs. Before they reached the curve he called for them to stop.

Reese when he looked at him seemed almost in tears. We nearly to the curve, Sut, he said.

I know. I just want to get rested a minute so that when we look down that next stretch of road and there's nothing there I wont faint.

How long you reckon a feller can sweat like this and nothin to drink without dryin up?

Suttree didnt answer. He was looking back up the road, the accrued flat of the surface making mirages of standing water on the heat-bleared black macadam. A truck was coming down. A phantom truck that augmented itself out of the boiling heat by segments and planes, an old black truck that rode down out of a funhouse mirror, coalesced slowly in the middle distance and pulled to a stop alongside them.

Shithouse mouse, cried Reese, staggering toward the truck.

Suttree thought that if he reached for the vehicle it would resolve itself back into the cooking lobes of his skull from whence it came. But the old man was climbing up, jabbering mindlessly to the driver. Suttree followed. He pulled the door shut after them and it bounced open again.

Raise up on it, said the driver.

He raised up on it and it shut and they pulled away. As bad as they looked, bad as they smelled, this saint seemed not to notice.

How far are you going? Suttree asked.

Sevierville. How far you all?

He was a young boy, hair almost white, a light down at his chin and side jaws. We'll ride on in with you if you dont mind, Suttree said.

You more'n welcome.

Whew, said Reese. We was about give out.

Around the bend of the road was a store. An orange gaspump standing atilt. Suttree almost croaked out for a brief halt and Reese watched the building go past with sadder eyes yet.

Where you all from? the boy said.

Down around Knoxville. You from up here?

Naw, the boy said. I'm from down around Sevierville. He looked them over. I just come up here to mess around some last night, he said.

They watched the road in silence. Reese looked at the boy. He was wearing clean overall pants and he was leaning up over the wheel and he was chewing tobacco. You ever been to that there Green Room? said Reese.

The boy looked at him sidelong slyly. Shit, he said. Aint that the dangdest place?

You wasnt in there last night was you?

We come in there about three oclock this mornin.

Reese looked at him again. He shook his head. Well, he said. Be proud you wasnt there no earlier. That first shift is pure hell. Aint it Sut?

When they stumbled back into the camp on the river the four women and the boy were waiting for them with grim set mouths.

Boy if you aint a couple of good'ns, she said. Where's them groceries you was goin to bring?